Riccardo Barbari

1. Introduction Addressing multifactorial diseases is a formidable challenge, given the complex etiology of conditions such as cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and diabetes as well as cardiovascular, central nervous system, and metabolic disorders [1,2,3,4,5]. These diseases impact multiple biological pathways, evolving over time and presenting numerous pathophysiological issues.

1. Introduction Recently, requirements related to the biodegradability and the biomimetics of biomaterials have become more stringent for applications in the health and nutritional fields. Biomaterials can be protein- or nucleic acid-based compounds [,,]; however, polysaccharides and the latter are raising increasing interest for medical applications due to their lack of toxicity and physiological inertness.

1. Introduction The natural environment provides a large variety of compounds suitable for medicinal use.